Life In LC

The Lane County Golf Guide!

Beginning next Sunday, and continuing each Sunday throughout summer, a Lane County public golf course will be reviewed right here: in the Eugene Daily News.

Lane County is blessed; from Tokatee on the far-east to Sandpines on the extreme west and all points between. I challenge any one county in the country to match Lane for quality and variety of golf.

The purpose of these articles is not to assign scores to each course based on variables like price and condition: I’m not looking for the arbitrary “best” course in the county.

Instead, I’ve chosen to examine closely what each course has to offer. How is each course operated? Who are the customers they aim to serve? Do they cater to the weekly club member or a more specialized crowd?

Don’t get me wrong; I’ll talk plenty about the brand of golf each course sells; the course layout and difficulty, etc. But, I wanted to dig deeper. I wanted to know which courses cater specifically to mill workers, railroaders, visitors from outside the region, weekend day-trippers and every other demographic imaginable.

In Lane County there’s a course for every person and every occasion. I hope everyone who reads these articles is able to find a home course where they can be comfortable playing on a regular basis, discover an unfamiliar course and go play it and find a gem, a course that’s special not just by regional standards, but recognized nationwide as a highly desired golf destination.

When I conceived of this series I feared that information contained in twelve articles about golf courses in one county might quickly become redundant. I wondered if there was really going to be enough unique information from each course to justify writing and publishing twelve articles. Short answer? Yes, there is.

(Mark Apker/Eugene Daily News)

I hope you will come to realize, as I did, how lucky we are in Lane County to have so many fine places to play the sport we love. Please know: each course is a reflection of its stewards. At every course where you enjoy an excellent round of golf you will meet equally excellent people who are dedicated and conscientious caretakers of the game. Considering all the wonderful people I met as I researched these articles the quality of the courses has been unsurprising.

Each course is a unique story. I look forward to sharing these stories with you over the weeks to come.

Please check back each Sunday for a new course review! Once all the course reviews have been published the entire series will be available in an archive for you to reference.

Mark is a graduate of Brigham Young University and Lewis and Clark School of Law and an MBA candidate at the Marriott School of Business. His career has focused on the intersection of politics, law and business. He brings a unique insider perspective to each article he writes.